New Mandala

10 responses so far ↓

• 1 jonfernquest // Jul 10, 2007 at 1:53 pm

  Thanks for this link. It’s great to hear about mainstream non-denominational organisations like this, that target both girls and boys. That’s it’s run by a Thai female (outsider from the Akha community) is also significant.

  In the past, Christian missionary males running orphanages full of Akha females naturally raised suspicions.

  Baan Chivitmai is great (founded by a Christian Swedish female), but apart from that, all sorts of shady operations were sprouting up. One Akha NGO head owned a BMW and was more likely than not to be found on the golf course. One Korean missionary was reportedly dashing around Maesai brothels, no doubt doing important “field work.”

  In the past, one Thai female school teacher in Mae Chan even claimed that a Malaysian Chinese little boy trafficker was masquerading as a missionary. I even talked to her over the phone, translating the Thai for Matthew. This is entirely possible since the whole NGO sector isn’t or wasn’t regulated like it should be.

  The Ayui Foundation has to be reckoned as one of the good results of globalisation.

• 2 jeplang // Jul 12, 2007 at 1:59 am

  Has Sumalee been granted Thai citizenship?

• 3 jeplang // Jul 12, 2007 at 2:23 am

  Missionaries and hill-tribe people:
  Have there been any anthropological/sociological studies done on the impact of missionaries,or of Christianity, on hill-tribe people?

  Is it true that much of the early anthropological work in Northern Thailand [pre-1970's]was done by Christian missionaries?

  Of the 100 odd NGOs that Daniel [or is it Matthew?] McDaniel mentioned in his interview,how many are funded by Christian denominations?

• 4 Nicholas Farrelly // Jul 12, 2007 at 2:57 am

  Dear Jeplang,

  2) As I understand it, Sumalee is now a Thai citizen. According to “Asian Currents”, “Two years ago, she successfully applied for Thai citizenship”: Source: http://iceaps.anu.edu.au/ac/asian-currents-07-06.html#4

  3) I am not aware of any studies that directly enagage with your first question. However, it is true that some of the early ethnography of northern Thailand (c. 1950s/1960s and before) was undertaken by missionaries. As for the number of NGOs working in the hills that are funded by Christian organisations – I am not sure, but it’s a good question. I will invite Matthew McDaniel to join this conversation and, with any luck, he will be able to provide an answer for us.

  New Mandala readers with more than a passing interest in these questions may find this novel by Mischa Berlinski is worth the effort: http://www.berlinski.com/mischa/thebook/

  Best wishes to all,

  Nich

• 5 Matthew McDaniel // Jul 12, 2007 at 5:55 am

  There are easily over a hundred religious missions in north Thailand targeting Akha and other hilltribes, but leaning the heaviest on the Akha hill tribe.

  We have recently received complaints from Ban Chavit Mai females complaining of abuse by “donors”.

  Bakery located across from the Bus Station.

  We campaigned successfully for Rotary International to pull support for Children of the Golden Triangle mission, they pulled that support one month ago after we confronted the leaders of Rotary at a NW Conference in the US.

  Currently we are campaigning against Akha Outreach, and a couple of missionaries called Lori Crouch and Paul Vernon at http://www.loriandpaul.hopedenver.com

  We have complained to the parent churches and continue that effort.

  Akha Outreach is the mission that they work with in Chiangrai.

  This mission is run by Aje and Nancy, an Akha and an American missionary, Aje is brother to Yot, an Akha running Dapa, known of course for his cars and 500 baht women.

  Don’t be a girl in his school or hostel.
  Dapa was started by Paul W. Lewis, the American Baptist missionary who stated in his thesis that an Akha woman was easier to sterilize if you made her a christian first, maybe like a labotomy, mental sterilization, extracting the soul, etc?

  Most missions extract children from the villages and use them for money bait as make believe orphans.

  Vern McCauley runs Eden House Children’s Home near Chiangrai, http://www.akha.org has a link to his project on YouTube.com so it is probably blocked.

  Vern has at least 16 teen and preteen GIRLS ONLY PLEASE saved from something in an Akha village.

  This is the status quo.

  Naturally if someone runs a real NGO in Chiangrai and lets kids trapped in town stay there this is helpful, loosely structured, but not as a means to bring them down when the grip on the land should not be weakened at this time. Forestry loves churches and missions that move Akha off the land for any reason.

  I have stated for a long time that I am not aware of any of the missions which support human rights.

  We need more well run NGO’s, less missions.

  Missions have done more to destroy Akha culture and help the Akha loose their land or remain silent about human rights abuses, over the last 30 years, so I am not sure that we can add up much more than defacto benefit for the Akha from this compared to what wealth has been built by these missions in the same time, which is for the most part not owned by the Akha for any productive use.

  We are talking millions of dollars here to give you some idea.

  Millions per YEAR.

  Without an emphasis on human rights, the Akha will continue to loose land and other resources.

  The removal of children should not be tolerated. Assistance to young people in town can be useful, but should not promote a land exodus.

  Matthew McDaniel

• 6 Matthew McDaniel // Jul 12, 2007 at 9:10 am

  Answer to a couple of questions.

  1. I am not aware of any studies on the impact of missionaries on the hill peoples.

  While I seen very short commentaries they are usually written in articles where the journalist is trying for a “balanced – make everyone happy, no one a villain” kind of comment, some even claiming that the missionaries could be saving the culture, which of course is a joke.

  The missions work hand in hand with the state policies to destroy the Akha community, to displace it and of course to displace its culture.

  Removal of children is of course the most violent aspect of this. The money collected when posing these children as orphans shows that there is money out there but it is being subverted.

  Once in years gone by I saw a convention on the social economy of missions, but nothing on the hill people that I know of.

  I see very little direct critical writing of what missionaries are doing in their corrupt function for imperial and colonial powers and mindsets.

  I seldom if ever saw any introspection on the part of missions in Thailand of themselves.

  2. As to anthropological work on the tribes, I don’t think this can be attributed to missions. Certainly they had opportunity. In the case of the Akha there was quite a bit written by Paul W. Lewis but much of it is not available. However missions positioned themselves as anthropologists, but this runs directly in contradiction that CONVERTED villages are destroyed as to identity, so they destroy what they study? Basically would be the best case.

  On the case of Lewis, we do in fact have copies of his rather rare ethnic notes on the Akhas of Burma, and maybe those can be passed around later. Certainly from his notes it is clear that he knew what he was destroying and I personally believe this came from racist thinking and personal character that made it ok to claim to be an anthropologist at one time while willfully destroying what one studies in the same moment. I was told by Akhas in Burma that Paul W. Lewis had many village gates burnt and of course there are the sterilizations of Akha women.

  Aje and Yot continue feeding Lewis’ policy of cultural destruction in Chiangrai province.

  I know of no other evidence of study of the hill people that is much published. Matisoff published Lahu dictionary, and of course the Lahu are predominantly destroyed as to culture by Paul W. Lewis and his tribe.

  3. Of the 100 plus orgs in Chiangrai, most all of them are supported by Catholic, protestant or independent missions.

  If there were many much more critical studies of the missions affects then it would be harder for them to do what they are doing, we can hope that the number of studies increases with linking it to the actions of the Thai government, which missions never take a stand to oppose.

  Matthew McDaniel

• 7 Matthew McDaniel // Jul 12, 2007 at 9:20 am

  Note:

  That is that there are not many other pushlished studies that I know of on the hill tribes on the part of missionaries. Published by non missionaries and anthropologists, there is quite a bit.

  Hanks published some of the early stuff on the Akha and there is a host of other.

  Matthew

• 8 Matthew McDaniel // Jul 12, 2007 at 9:30 am

  I think it is very important to be very clear about what the issues are here. If a person’s human rights are protected then their labor stores up in wealth and nutrition and property and what ever else they build and they are most able to protect and defend their lives and families. Take this away and they are degraded and downgraded, assimilated (not without pain and tragedy) and put in prison, etc ad endless.

  That is why when mission websites hide all this information they are not telling people what is really going on for one and secondly they do not openly oppose it, so they benefit the perpetrators, and simplify the causes of the tragedy that fit their topic, salvation will bring life to the Akha people. While the mission compounds are safe, the Akha land is not.

  I think that this is a very fundamental way in which missions play into the tragedy, create the tragedy and prevent a solution in order to strengthen their own hand.

  As the Akha say, “the missions build a rice terrace on our backs that never goes dry.”

  Considering what the missions claim they are about, there is significant evil in this deception. And really no ground can be found for not saying that the missions are trafficking Akha children from their villages to the towns, to the residential schools of taught dependency, while the Akha loose the land that is so valuable for them, and the missions cash in on it all.

  For Jesus of course.

  As stated, missions wealth, of these missions that hold Akha children, is in the millions of dollars, but they tell the donor the Akha are poor, or what problems they have which are fundamentally economic and caused by lack of human rights protecting the fruit of their labor.

  What gets me best of all is the removal of children by these people, who love to talk of people like James Dobson and family values. A more corrupt people do not exist.

  Generally EVIL people do not claim to be all that moral, as compared to missions who can justify about anything if it makes them a buck.

  Matthew

• 9 jonfernquest // Jul 12, 2007 at 2:38 pm

  Thank you Matthew. No one will ever a better job than you did ferreting out **the truth**, however…

  The manager of Baan Chivit Mai is a very honorable man. That middle-aged or much, much older, male donor tourists pester young beautiful nubile females asking them for “dates,” as I’ve overheard, or even more straightforwardly if they can “get married” that is right now or at least in a week, would seem to be the natural result of having such a collection of young beautiful females in a highly visible tourist area in a room with big windows.

  I go there for the free newspaper, air conditioning, bread (i’m a farang, after all), and to escape from my 8 dogs, but my wife doesn’t think so. She’s wrong. If there was another cafe that wasn’t just a hot noodle shop with one fan, without the nubile females, I would go there instead and read my books alone. IMHO a good business idea.

  Like one missionary from Australia who I used to teach with told me, she didn’t trust any male alone with a female. In fact, there was a teacher who had this very suspicious, alternatively “father” or “uncle” relationship to many of his students, and was continually being reviewed for alleged favoritism, oh and also his wife left him when she found him in the car alone with a high school student. (Which reminds me, at Manerplaw, Kawthoolei, if a young male ABSDF Burmese male was found alone in a hut with a Karen girl, off to the wedding chapel immediately, or so I was told, so there’s clearly a pattern here) I don’t know, but I remember a American missionary told me that new christian converts at the university were whispering malicious gossip about me, saying apparently that I was romamtically involved with my best female student, both precocious and fluent (also nominally born a Christian, daughter of a police officer, but rebelling against everything in sight, dress code, her major law, Thai sexual mores, apparently having an affair with her French teacher, etc, etc) and who essentially taught my 20-odd student class herself or at least made it work so well that I taught those students for a whole year because they asked me back, and of course gave me glowing marks on student evaluations which the adminsitration takes way, way too seriously, often pandering to students who want a movie star, celebrity, entertainer teacher, not a “serious” teacher to actually learn and prosper and do honour to their parents, grandparents, country, etc, but getting back to the main point, given that the country still has entertainment zones where, let’s say, an aging European bachelor with sweaty palms, can fly in and find a so-called “rent-a-wife” in about 5 minutes, extreme perspecuity is called for in all matters in Thailand, if you are male, as for femafles, I don’t know, though I’ve heard stories…

• 10 jonfernquest // Jul 12, 2007 at 4:29 pm

  - Evangelical missionaries are essentially a national security risk for Thailand
  - They receive large amounts of money from outside the country.
  - Sometimes from the US government (under Republican Bush).
  - A New Republic reporter interviewed Matthew about this, if I remember correctly.
  - They undermine Buddhism.
  - They get deeply embedded in places, sometimes for 100s of years.
  - They push every foreigner who isn’t an evangelical missionary out of the place by taking their jobs and questioning their legitimacy
  - They never take a critical stance towards anything
  - High level officials at my university were arrested for running a child prostitution ring, no word from the missionaries
  - I used to ask the one sitting next to me if she remembered the lions in the colisseum
  - They have an agenda that often sounds military in nature, like conquering all of northern Thailand up through Yunnan.
  - Most are completely and utterly self-righteous.
  - They don’t take indigenous institutions seriously, just something to convert.
  - For example, the obese American guns and jesus guy majoring in English at the university I taught at, was always making fun of the English program and his studies, despite the fact that he was the only native and fluent speaker in the program, his missionary teacher laughed along with him
  etc, etc, etc….
  - The Catholic church on the other hand is a model of probity

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